Ex-SF crime tech agrees to plead guilty to theft

SAN FRANCISCO 
A former San Francisco Police crime lab technician accused of skimming cocaine she was supposed to be testing has agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor theft.

Two juries deadlocked in the federal felony trial of 62-year-old Deborah Madden.

After the second mistrial in January, federal prosecutors offered to drop the felony charge in exchange for a guilty plea to misdemeanor theft, the same offer the defense had made initially. The San Francisco Chronicle says (
http://bit.ly/ZeHEYG
) the charge is punishable by up to a year in jail.

Madden was at the center of a scandal resulting in hundreds of drug cases being dropped after she was accused of taking cocaine evidence from the lab while she worked there in late 2009.

The federal charges came after state prosecutors declined to file charges.